A WORKAHOLIC ’ S LESSON
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I guess you could say from the outside looking in , I had it all . The career , the house , a loving husband , beautiful and healthy kids , the M Sport BMW , the spa membership , and the audience ( including you ) that gave me affirmation of my “ perfect ” and envious lifestyle on a daily basis .
The problem was that it was all a facade . I was actually in a deep , dark depression that was progressively getting worse , and I didn ’ t know it until I was committed to a mental hospital on December 14 , 2016 .
The start of 2016 looked incredibly promising : I became obsessed with going on LinkedIn , seeing that I was in the “ Top 1 percent viewed profiles ” ( what does that even mean ?) and my posts were receiving hundreds of thousands of views . The fame of being recognized as having the “ Highest SSI Score ” at LinkedIn ’ s annual conference and shooting those infamous free throws with Shaquille O ’ Neal took me far — further than I ever expected . I capitalized on that fame on a daily basis to grow my newfound business , Lindsey Boggs Consulting .
The work poured in . I was on a plane every week , traveling across the world to speak on social selling , lead generation , and how to grow a pipeline . Occasionally , I was hired for giving motivational speeches concerning career growth and how I went from opera to sales . It was a high . I loved being on stage and I was in my element .
My Snapchats and Instagram posts were consistently showing me with mimosas in first class , Ritz-Carlton suites , and expensive wine at glamorous restaurants . What they didn ’ t show was me missing my daughter ’ s birthday , layovers of doom , an addiction to sleeping pills ( due to time-zone issues ), growing friction with my husband , and missing every single extracurricular activity with my daughter and son .
My life was presented to the outside world like this : bliss .
But it came with a price .
That summer brought an incredible opportunity to be a keynote speaker with leading marketing expert Gary Vaynerchuk at the Cisco / Avnet conference in San Francisco . That same week , my husband and I were to celebrate nine years of marriage . So I brought him to the conference and we were put up at the Ritz-Carlton for the three-day conference and then left for Carmel , CA . Since I felt I had to capitalize on the recent Gary Vaynerchuk encounter ( real-time , folks ), I ended up working on my entire anniversary trip . Friction escalated greatly and to this day , I cannot look at the fake smiling photos we took in Carmel .
From there , I traveled even more frequently , and from mid-August to late September , I was gone every single week . I hardly knew what my children were working on in school , my husband and I grew further and further apart , and I was only home long enough to do my laundry on the weekends and then head back to the airport early Monday morning . I didn ’ t even make an effort to be present when I was home because it became too exhausting to try . My photos that I put out there were sure fun to look at , though — always had a smile and a witty statement on my Snapchats .
Then , on Tuesday , September 27 , 2016 , my life changed forever . I was in Dallas at a trade show and I got a call saying my sister Melissa had been taken to the hospital for a suspected brain aneurysm . I took a 5 a . m . flight the next day to Washington , DC , and was told upon arrival that there was a 90 percent chance she would die . Ninety percent chance . How could this be ? I just talked to her earlier that day .
It took me three attempts to even enter her hospital room . All of the machines , wires , tubes — things I want to erase from my memory — scared me to my core . Once I was able to walk in the room , I sat with my parents and Melissa for the next three days and played her favorite music — Pink Floyd — while we waited for her to be matched up to people for organ donation . She was a nurse and it was her dying wish to help others , so we helped her fulfill her wish .
On October 1 at noon , my sister Melissa saved eight people ’ s lives by donating her organs .
What I realized ( and it was probably the most important lesson I learned that year ) during those days of sitting with my brain-dead sister that surgeons and doctors go home every day and think about the patients that they lost — people that died in their care . In my world , I was obsessing over losing a software contract or a speaking gig . It put everything into perspective for me .
Life spiraled downhill quickly from that point . Planning a funeral for my one and only sibling was something I never expected I would have to do at this point in my life — she was only 38 . On top of all of that , I had just started a new and exciting software sales job at Medallia , and me , the Type A overachiever , expected to achieve top-notch performance and to win right out of the gate . I wasn ’ t functioning at full capacity , not even close . I was still traveling a ton , and I missed even more special events at home and became a stranger to my children . My son would cry when I tried to read to him or put
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